Ginger Tablet

Post-Oil White Chocolate Passion Fruit Opera Cake

Despite my earlier hesitation, I am now stuck to this Daring Bakers baking club like burnt caramel on my kitchen counter. The other members are so nice. Their cakes look lovely. And explaining that I belong to an online baking club has become one of my preferred strategies for small talk at parties; it's an unabashedly nerdy pursuit and a potent antidote to art world self-importance. People think I'm a dork, but a dork who bakes cakes -- cakes that they could perhaps sample one day. There's something seductive in this.

But these warm feeling aside, I have two persistent concerns. One: perpetual baking is a good recipe for getting fat. I got fat the first year I lived in Scotland (something about eating chips every third meal and drinking 134 litres of beer in a week...) and I am not up for that again. Two: the recipes all assume that we own stand mixers. I don't. I understand their appeal, but I move a lot and they are heavy. And they take up counter space. And they're also out of my price range currently.( All this to say that if I was ever sure of living in a place for more than eight months and someone wanted to give me one, I wouldn't say no.) So my little broke and roaming heart sinks when I read yet another recipe that calls for whisk and paddle attachments. It's the reason I didn't do the first challenge after I signed up to the club.

But chin up. You can't be a victim in life. I couldn't just retire. And a couple of simple solutions allowed me to conquer this month's challenge: a white chocolate opera cake.

First step: Bike 30 miles, the last 10 hilly. This is what I did the day before baking the cake.  Although I was motivated by the chance to try out a new route and see a new part of the country and get to the beach and hang out with a friend, there is something lovely about cycling for hours and knowing that you can eat absolutely whatever you want afterwards. Nothing matters. The weekend before J and I biked 60 miles in a day and then assiduously consumed a container of ice cream. And then bragged repeatedly to all our loved ones.

Second Step: Buy an egg beater. An old-fashioned one with a red handle for £1.99 from the shop on the corner. With this little gadget you can be your own stand(ing) mixer. It's that easy. The perfect solution for a cheap nomad like myself who still wants fluffy egg whites. I would recommend that you all buy one now, because in the post-oil age when we have to bake over apocalyptic campfires, this is the only way you are going to be able to make meringues. (Again, please watch my politics shift if I ever actually own a stand mixer.)

So, on with the cake. I liked this challenge because even when I changed the font size to 9 pt, it was still five pages long. That's a recipe. The components of an opera cake are an almond sponge, a buttercream frosting, a ganache mousse, a simple syrup and a chocolate glaze. While normally this is made with dark chocolate and dark flavourings, we were told to keep it white and light and summery. Because I wasn't sure how my egg beater would perform, I left out the buttercream in favour of the ganache mousse. And I decided that I would flavour my cake with tart passion fruit to balance the choking sweetness of the white chocolate.

While making this, I discovered two things:

1) It wasn't really that complicated. Sure there are lots of components, but each component is not that involved. For instance, to make the syrup you just boil water and sugar and a little flavour and then leave it to cool. No problem. The cake and ganache weren't that hard either. I anticipated a full day in the kitchen, but I was done with enough time to get out to a patio and drink a slew of bloody marys in the hot Scottish sunshine.

2) My egg beater is fucking awesome! It whipped up the egg whites and the cream and the cake batter in no time. And it provided my right arm with a little toning session all the while. It was like my arm was going for a wee bike ride of its own. After beating the egg whites for the cake batter, I was so impressed with its performance that I regretted my decision not to make the buttercream. But I was too lazy to go out to the store to buy the stuff I needed at that point.

For a good step-by-step description of the stages and for the recipe, I would visit Cream Puffs in Venice here. You can see what all the other bakers made here.

For my offering, I kept closely to the recipe, but halved it. While I still made two sponge cakes in the jelly roll pans, they were probably thinner than they should have been. It didn't matter.

The passion fruit was introduced in the ganache filling that I spread between all of the layers, not just the last one like I was supposed to. I strained the pulp of five fruits through a fine-meshed sieve and added it to the melted white chocolate before folding it into the whipped cream. Pretty delicious. In the future, I would maybe up the juice content a bit since the flavour was subtle.

I then decorated the top with passion fruit seeds. Last month J described my cheesecake pops in a very unflattering and un-PC way. He thought everyone else's looked cute, though. This month he said my cake looked like it had been decorated by very neat and pattern-conscious mice. So sweet. So supportive. So not getting any of this cake.

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Housekeeping (or not):

The gods love it when I have to move house. They've conspired to make me do it again. J and I are shacking up and on the lookout for a new place. Because of this, postings may be erratic over the next month or two. Just go on without me. I'll catch up.

Searching for Scones

Moving to the UK has allowed this North American girl the opportunity to fulfill some lifelong goals first identified while flipping the pages of The Secret Garden or Mrs Dalloway and during the hours spent watching Pride and Prejudice.

The goals included:

1. Acquire a boyfriend with an English accent
2. Go for moody solitary walks in the mist amongst old and grey buildings. Or moors/seaside. Whichever is closer, really.
3. Use British slang without sounding stupid, but not when talking to people back home. Never ever doing it then.  
4. Eat a lot of scones while visiting ancient historical homes

How have I done so far? Well #1 has been checked off the list and #2 describes my walk to work most days of the year. #3 has been less successful, but it's a rare foreigner who doesn't at times sound ridiculous in their new setting. Sometimes people in Canada think that my accent has changed, but mostly they are polite when I refer to my flat and I do my best not to say mobile when I mean cell and pissed when I mean drunk.  

The fourth entry on that abridged list has proved trickier than I thought. The picture above was taken after an early morning bike ride. Having gone on an empty stomach, the last 5 miles of my ride were spent thinking about the scones at Pollock House, a lovely stately home in Pollock Country Park, and right on my way home. The upper floors of this house are a museum complete with an ornate library and an impressive collection of Spanish paintings and small William Blake's that you could touch if you wanted to (I didn't, but I wanted to). You have to pay to go into that part and so I've only been with my mom. Downstairs, though, they have a cafe in the incredible old kitchen. There are shelves of old pots and strange tools, beautiful green tiles and pitch black stoves, comfortable wooden tables and a large skylight, opening up the space. And when the weather is nice, you can also sit outside in the garden, snuggled up to huge planters of alarmingly fragrant magenta hyacinth and absorbing all light possible. A setting like that can only be made more perfect with than tea and a fresh scone (preferably fruited), something fatty to spread on its soft interior and a little pot of red jam.  The picture looks pretty good then, huh?

Well, it's deceiving. First of all, you will notice that the young lad serving me placed the butter right on the paper napkin on my plate. As my napkin cam pre-buttered, it was not great at its intended job to debutter me. And while the jam is there, and the tea was great, that large and fluffy scone was a pretty big disappointment. A dense scone is a terrible thing, generally made from over-mixing the batter after the liquid has been added. I know this because I make this mistake almost every time I attempt them. To get a light and fluffy one, the maker needs to be swift and judicious with the addition of liquid. Unfortunately, the maker of this scone didn't take that gamble and just added 1/2 c of baking soda instead. I exaggerate, yes, but every crumb tasted of chemically salt. A scone should not be salty. It should be barely sweet and moist. Salt should be provided by the butter alone. In this case I ended up omitting the butter and slathering the jam twice as thick to try and achieve balance on my tongue. Not a good compromise.

 Too much baking soda also affects the texture. A scone should fall apart in layers, not clumps. It should not look like bread. This was definitely bready. I know that the recipe they use is a very old and traditional one, but either someone was having a wobbly day in the kitchen, or it's time to raid the recipe cards of somebody else's granny.     

But this isn't a unique affliction. At a recent work event held at the Abden House in Edinburgh I had an equally underwhelming scone in another gracious old residence. This one was wholewheat, and I was prepared to accept that as it came sliced with cream and jam already cozy between it's layers. And it came at 3 o'clock when a the sight of a scone and a cup of tea can solve almost any problem. But again, it was bready and far too salty. There wasn't a crisp and rocky crust. It was like eating a slightly stale brown  roll with too much whipped cream.

So a quest has begun for a great scone in an amazing setting. I'm sure this is possible, but thinking back I am not sure if I've hit upon a contender yet. I fear that as scones do not keep well, people preparing them for large numbers of people over extended periods of time tend to mess around with the basic make-up of the scone. Sometimes they are like bread and sometimes, if you get one at a coffee chain for instances, they are too sweet, more cakey, like a muffin of a different shape. Both variations keep far better, but neither is acceptable. But when I find a place that is willing to make small batches of fresh scones, I'll let you know. I might just give it another shot myself.

p.s. If you do visit the cafe at the Pollock House, their gingerbread is really, really wonderful. It's want I normally have and it's what I will now revert to.

Three Things to do with Melon

Glasgow has been experiencing perfect weather. Bright, sunny and very long days that warm up enough to warrant throwing off our jackets and strolling around in sundresses. Those of us who are so inclined, anyway. In my experience, this is a standard routine for Glasgow. It teases us with a few amazing weeks at the end of spring and then delivers a dreary and chilled summer. But I'm not thinking about that now; I'm still clinging delusionally to idea that this will last until November.

And until it gets miserable, I'm going to eat melon. There are crates of them sunning themselves outside my local shops right now. So perfectly ripe that I can almost smell them around the corner. The best ones at the moment are the compact, pale green Galias. Each bite is a fragrant deluge in your mouth. Yup. A fragrant deluge. I'm sticking to that description.

Now of course, the best thing to do with melon is just to eat it the way it is, coating yourself and anything around you in sticky juice. But if you want to justify eating more melon, here are other ways of getting it into your food (in order of complexity):

Melon and Cucumber Water

This is very, very basic, but very, very lovely. All you have to do is take a long slice of cucumber and a slice or two of melon and put them in a pitcher of water. Put it in the fridge to cool. Drink it a couple of hours later. You'll be surprised with how melon-y it is and you'll want to drink it forever and ever. A couple of slices of lemon is nice in there as well.

When I organised enough to do this, I end up drinking litres of this magic water. When the levels get low, you can just continue to top up the jug with water for a day or two. After that the melon and the cucumber get a little sad and should be replaced.

Melon with Coconut, Ginger and Pepper

This is an easy solution if you want your melons a little saucier. And, really, who doesn't?

You take:

• one can of coconut milk
• four tablespoons of ginger marmalage
• 20 peppercorns

Put everything in a small saucepan and simmer until the liquid is reduced and slightly caramelized (it will turn pale gold). At this point you can strain it through a fine sieve to get the peppercorns out, but you'll lose the chunks of ginger. I just left it and warned people to avoid the peppercorns.  Let it cool and thicken. Cut some melon into bowls and spoon the syrup over top.

Melon and Mint Tabbouleh with Feta

This recipe was adapted from one I found on epicurious. The original one is here. I've added more bulgur and reduced the amount of oil. I also put in some feta because I thought it might need a bit of a salt kick to balance all that sweet melon. It's good. I could eat this anytime of day.

• 1.5 cups of bulgur
• 2 cups of fresh mint leaves
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• salt
• Finely chopped red onion
• some lime juice
• half a small melon, chopped into small pieces
• as much feta as you want, crumbled

Prepare the bulgur according to your favourite method. I poured about 2.5 cups of boiling water over mine, covered the bowl and let it sit for 40 minutes.

While you are doing that, take 1 3/4 cup of the mint and blend it with the oil and salt. Roughly chop the rest of the mint and stir it into the mixture*. Throw in the onion and melon and lime juice.

When your bulgur is ready, drain off any remaining water and combine it with your melon and mint mixture. Crumble some feta in or on top. Toasted pumpkin seeds would be nice, too.

Eat this with a big spoon so you can really shove the lovely stuff into your mouth. No one will see.

Now that I've shared this arsenal of melon techniques with you, I need to go. I have a new sundress on, so I should clearly be outside and away from this computer and making the most of the remaining afternoon. Take a bite out of a firm and succulent melon for me.

xk 

*The original recipe didn't call for any chopped mint, but I actually found the mint taste too weak when I blended the leaves with oil, so I added chopped leaves to perk it up. You can ignore this step.

 

Birthday Marmite

It felt like the right time to give Marmite another go. I get asked about my feelings for this slick salty mess fairly often and I generally say that I simply don't know, that it's been a while since I tried it.

In truth I always assumed that I hated it, but as it last touched my tongue many, many years ago, there was always a chance that my taste buds had matured (or deadened) and would now accept this condiment. So to be sure, I had an early morning fling with Marmite once again in recognition of a special day.

Today is my stepmother's birthday and she was the person who first brought Marmite into my life. My stepmother is made from strong stuff and generally starts the day with a potent smear of something smelly on hot toast. Marmite, anchovette, stinky cheese.  She is not one for fruit cascading delicately over granola. That's a breakfast for those of us who are weak in the morning. For those of us who would probably choose to survive on cake alone before 11 am. I've had cake and fruit for breakfast twice this week already. 

But I can be tough now and then, especially when it reminds me of home and of a person I miss.

This is what I prepared for myself this morning:

It's a deconstructed cheese and marmite toasted sandwich (obviously).  It was important to have two halves because I needed a safe space to run to in the event of a Marmite apocalypse in my mouth. I needed to have some strong cheddar (one of my oldest friends) within close biting distance.

What you can't see in this picture are the deep pools of butter that the Marmite is resting on. This was the key, my British friends told me, of gradual Marmite acceptance. A great deal of butter and a thin smear of Marmite. The ratio can then slowly balance as you become accustomed to ingesting black sodium paste.

What you can see is Marmite's little trick of looking like chocolate spread. Asshole.

Before I tell you how I felt about this breakfast, let me tell you a few things that I like about Marmite:

• the packaging, especially the bright colours and dark, ominous glass
• the B vitamins it's supposed to contain
• the glossy, thick, smooth texture that looks like printing ink

But here are my feelings about Marmite on toast:

Still revolting after all these years. Still like sucking on a bouillon cube. I couldn't taste the butter underneath. I was crying out for the butter! The Marmite just masked everything with it's aggressive vegetably salt. I ate half of the piece of toast. I tried to eat it all, but my jaw would not open to accept it. I had no control over my body's reaction.

There has been a salty taste in my mouth all day.

Is this the end for me and Marmite? I'm not sure. In the past I've had some success with learning to love things I hate by repeatedly trying them. Hating them, hating them, hating them and then suddenly, one day, getting a little urge to try again.  A little craving that can be nurtured into full-blown acceptance. You never know.

So my darling stepmom, please see this masochistic act as a way of remembering you today when we are so far apart. I'm sorry that Marmite is still not a shared love. I'll have some cake for you tonight instead. And maybe tomorrow morning as well. Happy Birthday!

It's still mostly a secret

I've just begun work on my new online journal; www.katiemcgown.info. This space will document what I make when I'm not making food. It's a spot for old work that I continue to be fond of, pictures from exhibitions and documentation of studio experiments. Sometimes there will even be cake. I've only just started to flesh it out, but if you want an early look, you are more than welcome.

More food next week! x

At Long Last: A Recipe for (Candied Rhubarb) and Ginger Tablet

Do you see those ugly chunks of candy up there, dear readers? Those are my belated present to you. They were supposed to be for our six month anniversary, but I was busy that day. Here they are now, though. A little token of my great appreciation for you popping in here now and then. Six months and thousands of hits. Pretty nice. Thank you so much.

So here is a recipe for Candied Rhubarb and Ginger Tablet. A candy of my dreams. Tablet is a Scottish variation on fudge. It's basically crystallized sugar and butter, so the texture is firm, a little bit like maple sugar candy. You can make a plain one, but I like to add some other flavours. I would also like to nominate the first person to pair rhubarb and ginger as my anonymous patron saint. Together they are invincible. The ingredients for this recipe are very simple: sugar, butter, condensed milk, rhubarb and ginger marmalade. But their assembly is a bit of a trick. This was the third time I had made tablet and I think I finally nailed it with these nuggets. I think I am finally ready to write about it. It's a daunting thing to make in Scotland; everyone's granny does it the best. Way better than me. It's a candy that relies on loads of steady stirring and knowing just the right time to turn off the heat.  Granny skills.

The first time I made it, I stuck a candy thermometer in the pot so I knew exactly when it got to the right temperature. I took it off the heat, stirred like made for exactly five minutes and then poured it onto a baking sheet. I followed the recipe exactly and it was a disaster. It tasted as good as a load of sugar and butter can taste (i.e. amazing), but I had left it to cook for too long and it was horribly grainy. You don't want grainy tablet. It feels like sucking on sandpaper. 

The next time I made it, I found instructions that relied on sight and texture rather than temperature. It was perfect. I ended up with a pristine pool of candy that I smugly cut into perfect squares and disseminated at Christmas.

I had no qualms as I set out to make a third time, this time for you. It started well. Everything bubbled in my great black cauldron as I stirred and stirred and stirred. After about ten minutes the bubbling liquid was just shot through with wisps of caramel colour. In the next five minutes the whole mass changed from white to warm gold and I knew it was almost time. I checked the texture and it was right, too. I turned off the heat, stirred it again and then went to add some ginger marmalade to the mixture. While I was opening the jar, the sugar mixture almost boiled over the top of the huge pot I was using. Not a good sign. I quickly added half the jar and stirred again like mad and then poured the whole lot onto a baking sheet.

It was very ugly. I was deeply disappointed. The tablet had cooled just enough before pouring to make an uneven and craggy surface. I tasted good, and the internal texture was perfect, but it was marred by this ugly crust. I pressed the candied rhubarb into the top of the still-warm mass and took my heavy heart to bed.

The next morning I told my Scottish flatmate of my disappointment. "It looks perfect!" she said. I thought she was joking, the jerk. She assured me that she wasn't. That tablet should look a little rough. That is was undesirable to have a smooth finish. (In my head) I gave her two hundred dollars for making me so happy and making my tablet feel so secure in its appearance.

I brought some into work the next day and my boss said exactly the same thing. That she and her siblings used to fight over the rockiest pieces. She said my tablet was great. I did my work extra efficiently that day.

So, dear readers, it's ok to be ugly! Not that you guys know anything about that. But if you make this recipe and it doesn't come out looking like a freshly watered skating rink, don't worry about it. If it crumbles when you take a bite and makes you want to rot your teeth out one by one, then you've done it right. How liberating is that?

(the underbelly of the tablet was smooth to the touch)

Candied Rhubarb and Ginger Tablet

I think this is a great basic recipe. There are loads of photos and really good step-by-step directions. If you've never made tablet before, you should look at this first. Do you see the problem, though? That's right, this site shows a perfectly smooth end result. This was the reason I was so upset with my ugly tablet baby. But don't worry. This person lives in the colonies (in Scarborough, ON!). Something was lost in the translation. Back here in Scotland, people like it a bit rough.

• 4 medium stalks of rhubarb
• 1 kilo of white sugar (try to use cane sugar) plus 1/2 c
• 100 grams of butter
• one tin of condensed milk (not evaporated) about 400 ml
• a little bit of milk
• about 1/2 c of ginger marmalade*

1. Wash the rhubarb and cut off any yucky ends. Cut the stalks in two and then slice them lengthwise in three or four strips. By my calculations, you should end up with 24-32 long and slim pieces.
2. Lay the rhubarb on a lined baking sheet and cover them with 1/2 c of sugar.
3. Bake for about 2.5 hours in a very low (as low as possible) oven with the door open just a wee bit.
4. Take them out when they've shrunk in size and are covered by the most delicious rhubarb syrup you have ever tasted. They'll be chewy but still pliable.
5. Now for the tablet. Get out your biggest pot. A really, really big one. If you don't have one that's enormous, please half the recipe. Now would be a good time to ban all children from the kitchen, too. This recipe involves a lot of boiling sugar. An accident with this stuff would be horrible. Ugly tablet is good, ugly and maimed children are bad.
6. Over medium-high heat, pour in 1 kilo of sugar. Add just enough milk to make a thick paste. Now add the condensed milk and the butter. Stir it up.
7. Continue to stir almost forever.
8. Is it just starting to get a little bit golden? That's good. Is it still lily white? Keep stirring.
9. You need to stir way more than when you make risotto.
10. Is it golden yet? All the way through? Good. You're really getting there. Now keep stirring.
11. Aside from the colour change you judge the readiness of tablet by the texture of the residue on the wooden spoon you are using to stir. The sugar liquid will solidify on the spoon as soon as it reaches the cool air. If this thin layer is gooey, it's still needs to cook. If it has micro grains, it's ready. If it has macro grains, you are in sandpaper land**. Test this by running your fingernail through the residue on the wooden spoon.
12. When it's golden and you have micro-grains, take the pot off the heat. (Remember, it will still be hot enough to melt your flesh). Give it a quick stir and then speedily add the marmalade. Even better, get a friend to add the marmalade as you continue to stir.
13. After two or three minutes, pour the mixture onto the baking tray (you could grease it first, but I didn't and it was fine).
14. Press the rhubarb into the top of the mixture. Alternatively, you could chop it and add the bits right into the mixture at the same time as the marmalade.
15. It will start to solidify almost instantly. Score it into squares as quickly as you can. I didn't do this and ended up wrestling to get it into chunks the next day.
16. Eat tiny delicate pieces with tea and coffee.

* I used to use about three balls of finely cut candied ginger and a few tablespoons of the syrup it lives in. The shops were out of that this time, so I used jam instead. Not only is it easier (finely dicing candied ginger is very messy), but I think the ginger flavour is better distributed this way.

** What do you do if you left it on too long and ended up with macro sandpaper grains? It's ok. Just pour it onto the baking tray and let it cool. Then crumble it up and use it to top yogurt or fruit or incorporate it into a cake or a crumble. It will still be amazing.   

 

A Darling Zucchini

I had never seen round zucchinis before this year. They're called Eight Ball Zucchini Squash in North America. I'm not sure what they call them in the UK. Maybe Round Courgettes.

These sweet and spotted little orbs produce all kinds of strange feelings in my heart; I suddenly have the urge to make stuffed zucchini. That has never, ever, ever happened to me before.

You can use these in exactly the same way as their oblong cousins, although apparently their flesh is slightly denser, so slightly better for frying. This one was sliced and roasted with tiny tomatoes, peppers, garlic and thyme and then piled onto a baked potato already blanketed with a thick layer of cheese.